Import: prioritization of metadata source?

[ATimson]

I recently reimported my library using the "Add books from directories (One book per directory) option. I would have expected Calibre to use the "preferred import format order" when choosing which version to grab the metadata from, for ones where I have both LIT files and ePub. But it didn't - ePub should've been prioritized first, but it used the LIT file.

It's not the newest file, either - for another book it correctly chose ePub from among ePub, PDF, PMLZ, and PRC. And it's not alphabetical. So frankly, I'm stumped.

Unless it's the order the files were added to the directory...? That could explain the differences, but if so... well, it's silly.

[kovidgoyal]

As far as I recall there is no particular algorithm used for this. If you are importing from a set of directories created by the save to disk button, then the OPF file will be used in preference, otherwise it is random.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

As far as I recall there is no particular algorithm used for this. If you are importing from a set of directories created by the save to disk button, then the OPF file will be used in preference, otherwise it is random.

I looked at this recently. I got the impression that after checking for the opf file, it just asked the OS to provide all the files and processed sequentially whatever the OS provided, so it probably has to do with directory order as the directory tree gets scanned. I'm not sure "random" is technically correct, but effectively, that's what you'd see.